"The Witches' Path," exclaimed his landlord, when questioned, "and whoever follows it never returns." It might have an outlet in another valley beyond, he added, but, shaking his head, there were strange stories about the Witches' Path, and while he could not verify them he knew that no one of his guests who had essayed to explore it had ever come back.
Sick of chattering men and women, harrowed day and night by his troubles, Gaston rejoiced in the prospect of an adventure of any kind, and while he smiled at the suggestion of danger lurking in the recesses of the Witches' Path, he secretly hoped there might be. Life was not a joyful possession to Seymour Gaston in those days, and he cared little whether he lived or died. So, early the following morning, with a well-provisioned knapsack on his back and an alpenstock in his hand, he set out upon the Witches' Path. After ten hours of climbing, crawling, sliding and slipping over almost impassable rocks and through impossible thickets, the trail led into a stretch of forest so dense as to completely shut out the fading daylight, and the wanderer was glad to accept as a bed the thick, endless carpet of pine needles that lay stretched out before him. The following morning he resumed his journey and at noon discovered, high on the mountain side, what appeared like a gray toy-house hidden among the rocks and pines. After another hour of tiresome climbing he stood before a cottage built upon the very edge of an immense cleft. From far below echoed the hoarse booming of a mountain stream. His knock was answered by a short, white-bearded mountaineer with piercing gray eyes, who, upon learning that his visitor spoke German, received him hospitably with the remark that it was seldom indeed that visitors came his way to brighten the lonely lives of himself and niece, who, he added, lived by making cuckoo clocks. It required no urging on the part of Caspar Kollner, the cottager, to induce his guest to defer his return until the following day, and after supper, served by the mountaineer's attractive young niece, the tourist was equally willing to join his host in a pipe and game of écarté, while the young lady looked on and played weird airs upon her guitar. Whether it was the strange quality of her undeniable beauty and the sombre mystery of her eyes, or her music, Gaston soon lost interest in the game. Although there seemed little purpose or training in her half listless playing, the sounds seemed to hint at unfathomable things, at fancies such as Gaston supposed might visit the soul of one who had strayed from the paths of his fellow-men into an exotic, unhealthy world of his own, where strange birds sang in a dusky, scented twilight. He played recklessly, lost steadily, and was repeatedly compelled to resort to the Bank of England notes in his wallet.
"You are in bad luck to-night. Shall we stop? You must be tired after your long tramp," at last suggested the host. Then, counting the money slowly and with evident pleasure, he handed to Gaston all the latter had lost. It was promptly pushed back protestingly, whereupon Kollner exclaimed, "Never! The pleasure is mine; the money is yours. It is my custom to play for stakes to lend interest to the game, but the law of hospitality forbids my keeping what I win." So Gaston returned the money to his wallet and bade his generous host and hostess good-night. Kollner led him to a large, low-studded room on the upper floor in which every article of furniture was elaborately hand-carved.
"The masterpiece of my craft," exclaimed Kollner, as he pointed with pride to a mammoth cuckoo clock, fully four feet wide and reaching nearly to the ceiling. "But our proudest possession," he continued, as he led his guest through a tall French window upon a small veranda, "is this," pointing to a view that caused Gaston to gasp for breath. The balcony directly overhung the mighty gorge, and from the gulf of blackness far below rose the sound of the tumultuous stream, while an uncertain moon threw fantastic shadows over the towering peaks above. "Most wonderful of all," continued Kollner, "is the echo, 'The Ghost of the Gorge' as it is called. You shall hear it at dawn." With that he wound up and set the big clock, adding, "When the cuckoo calls, rise and come to this balcony. My niece shall play from the rocks below and you will hear the spirit answer. Good-night!"
As on many other weary nights, sleep refused to come to Gaston. He lay for hours listening to the gurgle of the water and hearing in it echoes of the wild music of the guitar. Towards morning a feverish slumber came, from which he was aroused by the shrill "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" of the mechanical bird.
Clad in his pajamas he drowsily groped his way in the dusk towards the balcony. He had almost reached it when he overturned the chair which had served to keep the window half open during the night. In its outward fall it carried down the balcony with a crash and Gaston, horror-stricken, barely kept his balance by grasping the window casing. From the dark chasm rose the weird strains of the guitar, echoing through the gorge. The Lorelei was calling! But her notes were drowned by the shrill creaking of the iron hinges upon which the balcony now swung to and fro below Gaston, and which, like a flash, told him he had been led to a man-trap of hellish ingenuity. Instantly horror gave way to anger and the instinct of self-defence roused him to action. For months he had been reckless of danger, almost courted death. Now he was seized with an overpowering desire to live. He turned from the window and began to dress hurriedly when a noise attracted his attention to the cuckoo clock. Was it a hideous delusion? No! The thing was actually moving towards the centre of the room! In another instant Kollner appeared from an adjoining room through a door which the clock had concealed, his eyes glaring fiendishly as they rested upon the empty bed. Then, as he turned and saw Gaston, his face became a mask of absolute fright and bewilderment. For a moment only he recoiled, then flung himself upon his guest with the fury of a beast. Each instantly realized that the struggle would be to the death. Frenzied by the miscarrying of his diabolical plot, the mountaineer struggled madly, blindly, for a grip that should enable him to hurl his adversary over the mighty precipice. Foiled again and again by the agility of Gaston and forced to the defensive, he turned towards the open door to escape. As he did so Gaston rushed upon him, pinned his arms to his sides, and pushed him inch by inch to the open window, and—Caspar Kollner reached the end of the Witches' Path! Ten minutes later Gaston found the niece quietly preparing breakfast. She looked surprised, but when he told her that her uncle and not he had answered the Lorelei's call, she asked, with naïve innocence, what he meant. It was only after he had threatened to hand her over to the police at Trieberg that she made this confession:—
She had been brought up by her uncle, who had invented the folding balcony, and who always engaged his guests in a game of cards. He invariably won because he had taught her as a child to signal, by means of notes and chords on the guitar, the cards held by his opponent. He thus learned if his guests were supplied with money, and to gain their full confidence returned all they had lost. He was enabled to set the man-trap from his room below. Although the gorge held the remains of thirty victims, it was his boast that he had never killed a man, that each had of his own free will walked into eternity.
Gaston had heard enough. He did not stop for breakfast. He left Trieberg the following evening and thoughts of his business troubles no longer occupied his mind. When he returned to America he set to work to retrieve his lost fortune, and the folding fire-escape, he tells his friends, was suggested by something he saw abroad.
Gaston does not claim the gift of second sight, but he knows, he says, that in the performance of the Zillerthalers, the weird strains produced by "The Girl with the Guitar" describe to her blindfolded sister the articles borrowed of the audience.